PROGRAM

On March 16, 2011, Devin Fergus, new faculty member in the History Department at Hunter College, discussed his new book, Land of the Fee: The Decline of the Middle Class and the Making of the New World Financial Order, at the Roosevelt House.

About the Book:

Land of the Fee: The Decline of the Middle Class and the Making of the New World Financial Order excavates the link between deregulation, national politics, the built environment, and wealth disparity since the 1970s. Why, following years of record home ownership- typically the most reliable builder of wealth in a free-market society – has wealth disparity between America’s rich and the rest only increased? How did conservative opposition to gender and racial equity law in education during the 1980s ultimately indebt America’s middle class, consigning a majority of today’s college graduates to student loan debts averaging $23,200? And why, despite closing income gaps between whites and minorities and women and men over the last quarter century, for example, have racial and gender wealth trends widened between these same groups in the U.S. over the same time? The project explores the historical reasons for the sharp increase in economic inequality in the Unites States beginning in the 1970s, what policy makers have done to aggravate and remedy this disparity, and what has proven to be the impact of this gap.


New Faculty Talk with Devin Fergus | Posted on March 16th, 2011 | Faculty Public Programs